A Man & His Times

It was a typical Sunday in the New York Times. The lead editorial urged limitation of U.S. forces in Viet Nam and endorsed the idea of "an interim national government acceptable to both sides." Columnist James Reston, also questioning U.S. policy in Viet Nam, brooded over the "gap between the evangelical rhetoric of official Washington and the political realities of the world." The lead letter in the letters-to-the-editor column, written by an assistant professor of humanities, excoriated the U.S. Government for its "blind antiCommunism" and detected a "nascent war psychosis" in the American public.

Standing alone on the Times editorial page was Columnist Cyrus L. Sulzberger. He took a firm stand against "flabbiness in Viet Nam" and reminded all concerned that the U.S. "inherited the position of global superpower in 1945 and cannot escape its obligations." He recalled that "the 1947 Greek commitment under the Truman Doctrine was also originally unpopular. Many naive Americans and their newspapers then preferred the Communist rebels to the Athens government." And in the tone of a man delivering an urgent warning to his friends, he wrote: "If we crawl out of Viet Nam now, it is obvious that Southeast Asia right down to Australia will join our adversaries and that India will be outflanked."

Debating the Debate. This pattern of dissent by a Times columnist is not necessarily unique. Arthur Krock differs from the paper's policy on some issues, notably economics; Hanson Baldwin tends to differ on military policy. However, it is Sulzberger's independent line on Viet Nam that has become more and more conspicuous in recent months.

Times editorialists have long argued against a major U.S. commitment in Viet Nam.* The general Times approach comes under the guidance of Arthur Ochs ("Punch") Sulzberger, the publisher, who is Cy's first cousin, and John B. Oakes, editor of the editorial page, who is also a member of the Times family hierarchy. It is no secret that the Times editorial line on Viet Nam does not meet with universal approval among Timesmen, and the best public view of the continuing debate is Cy Sulzberger's consistent disagreement with his paper.

Last April the Times editorialized: "President Johnson's offer of 'unconditional discussions' was a splendid move on the diplomatic/political front, in the effort to achieve a peaceful solution of the quarrel." Sulzberger dissented: "It is fair to ask why Mr. Johnson chose this moment seemingly to alter a Viet Nam strategy that had but recently become more resolute. Waving a carrot may be seen by our adversaries as a sign of weakness." Times editorials have consistently called for deescalation: "What the U.S. is doing in Viet Nam is playing directly into the hands of Communist China by taking actions that lead to a steadily escalating, more dangerous, conflict." Sulzberger has disagreed: "This is admittedly a dangerous game, an experiment in gradual escalation. Yet the blank refusal of Peking or Hanoi to consider any negotiated settlement eliminates any other alternative save a disastrous withdrawal which we cannot contemplate."

Last May, James Reston decided that the President resembled "the two-gun Texas Ranger, the impulsive giant, tough, restless, fitful and unpredictable." He is given to "disorderly policy-making and capricious personal judgments," said Reston. Sulzberger saw a much different man. "On the surface," he wrote, a casual observer might see an "air of precipitate haste that accompanies presidential decisions when new crises erupt. But underlying such agitation there also appears to be a remark ably calm resolve not to be provoked by minor pinpricks nor to be impelled toward holocaust by local explosions."

Last week a New York Times editorial praised the "first serious public debate by responsible men on the Viet Nam issue--as initiated in the Fulbright hearings and carried forward by Senator Kennedy." Sulzberger wrote: "The Great Debate on Viet Nam policy has been featured by misinformation, passion, political opportunism, vanity, and hints of a smarmy dislike for President Johnson. What has emerged so far is a deep-seated doubt about ourselves and deep-seated ignorance of the world we inhabit. Elegant platitudes founded on myth are offered to the President as substitutes for policy."

Reasonable Logic. Sulzberger's move into the heat of the debate on Viet Nam comes as something of a surprise to his readers. He has a tendency to write slightly off the news--analyzing one part of the world when the fire is burning in another. Viet Nam he hits headon. In answer to the neo-isolationism of a Walter Lippman, who argues that the U.S. is over-extended abroad, Sulzberger denies that the U.S. sphere of interest is geographically limited. "Greece and Iran," he wrote, "where U.S. determination forced Communist retreats in Stalin's day, were far from American shores--as were Korea, Lebanon, Laos and Viet Nam."

Sulzberger is one columnist who is not badgering the President to make all his war aims crystal-clear. "A yard of adhesive tape stretched over the mouths of a dozen Administration leaders might prove an effective secret weapon," he has written. But while he believes that recent U.S. foreign policy has been based on "reasonable logic," he also feels that it has often been clumsily executed. "The content of great power policy must sometimes be blunt," he says. "Its style should always be burnished."

For the past 28 years, Sulzberger, 53, has lived overseas. While reporting from Greece in 1939 he met a Greek girl named Marina whom he later married in Beirut. In 1944 he was made chief of the Times's foreign correspondents, a post that he held until he became a roving columnist in 1954. When not on the road, he makes his base in the New York Times Paris office, where the walls of his suite are almost totally covered with autographed pictures of the world's political leaders, most of whom he knows quite well.

Sulzberger has formulated a political philosophy that stands him in good stead when he writes about international affairs: "Our business is neither ideological warfare nor the rigid maintenance of any status quo. Our business is to protect our own national interests from any threat, regardless of its philosophical label, and to try and see that changes in an ever-changing world are sufficiently controlled to avoid excessively dangerous explosions."

* Some readers feel that Times reporting and play of the news are colored by the same attitude. "Everyone should now be warned to suspect some of the most important reporting from Viet Nam," wrote Columnist Joseph Alsop last week, as he made a biting analysis of a story about a big U.S. operation in Binh Dinh province. The aim of the operation, said the story, was to find and destroy four regiments of the enemy, and it reported that not one of those regiments had yet been drawn into battle. While Alsop did not name the Times, his reference was clear. "An accompanying editorial all but crowed over this report of failure of American troops in the field," said Alsop. He pointed out that, contrary to the Times story, General Westmoreland was sure that two of the enemy regiments had been put out of action for three months; there were signs that a third had collapsed completely. "Who is more likely to be playing ducks and drakes with the facts," asked Alsop, "reporters rather obviously reflecting the outspoken preconceptions of a great newspaper, or General Westmoreland, who is one of the soberest and most brilliant field commanders in U.S. history?"

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